Sports ministry has banned its athletes from engaging in commercial activities so they can focus fully on 2008 Beijing Games.
BEIJING: China’s sports ministry has banned its Olympic athletes from engaging in commercial activities so they can focus fully on preparations for the 2008 Beijing Games. Sports Minister Liu Peng announced the ban on Wednesday, saying commercial activities were outlawed for all competitors in the run-up to the Games, according to state media.
“All the athletes, including those big stars, are forbidden to take part in all kinds of social activities to avoid distractions from training,” Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying at a meeting in southern China. Zhou Jing, director of the ministry’s press divisions aid on Thursday that “social activities” referred to all commercial sponsorships.
China’s top sports stars like Yao Ming, the NBA basketball player, and Liu Xiang, the Olympic champion 110m hurdler, earn millions of dollars a year in commercial endorsements. Minister Liu reportedly said exceptions could be considered if individuals sought permission in advance directly from the sports ministry. China has cracked down hard in the past on competitors accused of trying to maximise commercial earning power at the expense of their training commitments. Double Olympic champion diver Tian Liang, 27, was expelled from the national team after the Athens Olympics in 2004, accused of skipping training to take care of commercial undertakings. He is still exiled from the national squad although a teammate Guo Jingjing, also disciplined for commercial activities, has been reinstated.
Olympic champion swimmer Luo Xuejuan, 22, has also been overlooked by national selectors for the Asian Games next month, apparently because she too has been distracted by commercial endorsements. The latest ban underlines China’s determination to do well in the medal standings at their first Olympics on home soil in 2008.
State media reports said Chinese sports administrators were determined that China eclipse the United States for the first time as the world’s top sporting power, after finishing second at the Athens Olympics in 2004. “We face a very stern test at the 2008 Olympics,” Liu said. “Everybody should stay focused.”
Wei Jizhong, former secretary general of China’s Olympic Committee, singled out Liu for criticism in an interview with the Beijing News, published Thursday. “Liu’s commercial endorsements create a negative influence,” he was quoted as saying.
Evaluating China’s competitive standards ahead of the Olympics, Sports Minister Liu was reported as saying China remained strong in disciplines in which it had a tradition of excellence. But he was worried that the rest of the world was narrowing the gap and in some sports it had almost disappeared.
More worrying still, he said, China was slipping in team ball games, an area which had earned the country success in the past. He also noted that the gap with the top international level was still wide in athletics and swimming. On a more upbeat note, he said China was making progress in other disciplines such as boxing and water sports, where it had no tradition of dominance, although he cautioned that such progress had yet to be consolidated.
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